House Speaker Mike Johnson Skirts Question on Personal Bank Account
The newfound Speaker said he was a “man of modest means” in a Fox interview.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) responded on Sunday to a report by The Daily Beast that highlighted his apparent lack of a bank account on his financial disclosure.
The response, however, did not actually answer whether he had one.
Fox News Sunday moderator Shannon Bream pressed Johnson on whether he had a bank account, citing a Vanity Fair write-up of The Daily Beast’s report and noting that “there’s been so much made about it.”
“Can you clear that up for us?” Bream asked.
Johnson did not.
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“Look, I’m a man of modest means,” Johnson said. “I was a lawyer, but I did constitutional law, and most of my career has been in the nonprofit sector. We have four kids, five now, that are very active. And I have kids in graduate school, law school, undergraduate. We have a lot of expenses, but I can relate to everybody else. My father was a firefighter, right? I didn’t grow up with great means. But I think that helps us to be a better leader because we can relate to every hard-working American family. That’s who we are. And I think it governs and helps govern my decisions and how I lead.”
The Daily Beast reported on Wednesday that Johnson had not disclosed a personal bank account or one of his family members in his seven years in Congress, a trait that’s likely due to a modest, paycheck-to-paycheck lifestyle. Experts told The Daily Beast that the lack of disclosure raised questions about his financial health, particularly since Johnson has taken out a mortgage and personal loans.
“He owes hundreds of thousands of dollars between a mortgage, personal loan, and home equity line of credit, so where did that money go?” Jordan Libowitz, the communications director for the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told The Daily Beast. “If he truly has no bank account and no assets, it raises questions about his personal financial wellbeing.”
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